Obama's Budget Plan Never Balances - "Another Top-Down, Backward-Looking Document"

Financial Time Bomb

Today in Washington, D.C. - Feb 2, 2015
The House convened at Noon today and recessed until 2 PM today.

The Senate will reconvene today at 4 PM today. At 4:30, the Senate will take up H.R. 203, the Clay hunt SAV Act, a bill to provide mental health assistance and suicide prevention for veterans. At 5:30, the Senate will vote on passage of H.R. 203.

By unanimous consent, the Senate will hold a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 240, the House-passed Homeland Security Appropriations bill, on Tuesday at 2:30 PM.

President Obama released his budget proposal for the next fiscal year today, but  the budget has little to distinguish it from his previous proposals, which are all more tax-and-spend policies designed to grow government rather than grow the economy.

Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports notes, " Voters should be warned that virtually all the numbers reported in news coverage of the federal budget will be misleading at best. That’s because the budget reporting will be written primarily in the language of official Washington rather than the language of everyday Americans. In Washington, if government spending goes up less than expected, the politicians have declared it to be a “cut.” Normal people don’t consider something a spending cut unless spending actually goes down.

"Congress even passed a law in 1974 to make this abuse of the English language official. At the time, federal spending was starting to spiral out of control and voters wanted something done about it. Rather than deal with the substance of what voters wanted, Congress simply changed the definition of a word so that it meant one thing in Washington and another in America.  That let politicians campaign on claims of “cutting” government spending while spending continued to grow. Forty years of such deceit created the problems we face today.

"The problem—and it’s a big one—with that statement is that federal spending in 2015 is projected to be $138 billion higher this year than it was in 2009 ($3,656 billion this year compared to $3,518 in 2009). Think about that! Spending is higher than it was but the media says spending cuts are the reason for declining deficits."

Politico describes it as “a $4 trillion budget . . . designed to convince Americans that they can have it all.” And the story adds, “To pay for it, Obama proposes raising a number of taxes on wealthy taxpayers or businesses — revenue measures that have already been dismissed as nonstarters by the Republican Congress. The budget proposes new taxes on the wealthy, fees on big banks and taxes on companies that do business overseas — plus spending cuts on health programs and other savings — to cover the costs of all the new initiatives, senior Obama administration officials said on a conference call with reporters Sunday. . . . “The budget will call for $1.091 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016, including $74 billion that goes beyond the spending caps after the ‘sequestration’ spending cuts that Obama wants to eliminate. That would produce a $474 billion deficit for next year.”

The AP notes a few more key details. “Obama's fiscal blueprint, for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, proposes spending $4 trillion — $3.99 trillion before rounding — and projects revenues of $3.53 trillion. That would leave a deficit of $474 billion. Obama's budget plan never reaches balance over the next decade and projects the deficit would rise to $687 billion in 2025.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell found little impressive in the budget proposal, saying, “President Obama promised in the State of the Union to deliver a budget filled with ‘ideas that are practical, not partisan.’ Unfortunately, what we saw this morning was another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances—ever. The new Congress will focus on ways to help the Middle Class instead as we work to pass the serious kind of budget all Americans deserve: one that roots out and reforms wasteful spending, and that aims to grow Middle-Class jobs and opportunity instead of Washington’s bureaucracy.

“We’re asking the President to abandon the tax-and-spend ways of yesterday and join us in this practical and future-oriented approach.”

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